Data Sources

A data source is, in general, a source of data. However, this term is
one of the most abused and inconsistently misused terms in
database-related programming (at least in Microsoft’s arsenal). For
instance, when the data is contained in a text file, then the term
“data source” refers simply to the physical data in the file.
Similarly, when the data is contained in an Access database file
(extension .mbd) that is being
accessed by a file-based driver, the term data source refers to the
MDB file. On the other hand, when the data are contained in an Access
database file that is being accessed by a DBMS-based driver, then the
data source is considered to be the combination of the Access DBMS and
the MDB file. On the other hand, in the context of the new VB6
DataBinding object model, the term data source refers to a source for
the data binding, which is often a VB6 class module that has its
DataSourceBehavior property set to vbDataSource. In this case, the data source
itself contains no data whatsoever!